A critical look at critical didactics in Brazil

Abstract

Brazilian education is at the heart of an ideological dispute, caught between the voracity of the market and the longing for a full and emancipatory education. Within this struggle, Didactics establishes itself as a political act, an insurgent discipline and epistemological field. It is in this tense landscape that the collection “Didática Crítica no Brasil” (Critical Didactics in Brazil) stands as an indispensable beacon. This review offers an immersion into each of the critical didactic approaches: Didactics for Human Development, Developmental Didactics, Historical-Critical Didactics, Critical Didactics based on Materialist Dialectics, Intercultural and Decolonial Critical Didactics, Sensitive Didactics, Complex and Transdisciplinary Didactics, and Multidimensional Critical-Emancipatory Didactics. The foundational strength of Critical Didactics in Brazil lies in its ability to systematize this plurality and offer a rich theoretical repertoire, capable of challenging both technicism and neoliberalism, while affirming public schooling and teacher autonomy as an emancipatory project.